On which I write about the books I read, science, science fiction, fantasy, and anything else that I want to. Currently trying to read and comment upon every novel that has won the Hugo and International Fantasy awards.

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Wednesday, December 31, 1986

1986 Campbell Award Nominees

Location: Campbell Conference Awards Banquet at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

Comments: The results of the 1986 Campbell Award raise the interesting question of "what is a novel". The Campbell Award is specifically intended to honor the best science fiction novel of the year, and in this year the honor went to David Brin's The Postman. But The Postman isn't really a novel in some ways, but is rather a set of three connected novellas that all happen to include the same protagonist. The "fix-up" novel - that is a novel that is stitched together out of pieces of shorter fiction - has a long pedigree in science fiction, and The Postman seems like a fairly well done example of this sort of novel, but it still doesn't feel like an actual novel, and it doesn't seem like the sort of book that should be regarded as the best novel in a year.

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